In general, content protection may include various types of security schemes configured to control how, where and to whom content may be presented. Examples of content protection may include digital rights management (DRM) for content downloaded from the Internet and as conditional access (CA) for content provided via a television signal (e.g., through a set-top box). A variety of content protection systems are available. For example, Adobe Access is a content protection system offered by the Adobe System Incorporated, Widevine is DRM solution offered by Google Incorporated, and Marlin is a DRM platform created by an open-standards community initiative called the Marlin Developer Community. While the above example content protection solutions may provide similar functionality, their actual implementation may differ substantially.
For example, even though key handling operations for all of the above content protection solutions may be similar, the key handling operations corresponding to each content protection solution still requires a custom implementation within a security processor in a device to protect root keys of trust along with intermediate and content keys (e.g., control words). Preparation of custom key handling firmware may be expensive because it requires specialized knowledge and validation testing. Moreover, implementing multiple customized firmware modules configured for key handling may open up new attack vectors in a device (e.g., to hackers or others desiring to acquire secret key used in generating runtime keys for accessing protected content), and thus, rigorous review is then required to mitigate the potential security risks. These requirements for custom programming substantially increase the work that goes into releasing new devices, which may increase the time and cost involved in getting new devices into the hands of consumers.
Although the following Detailed Description will proceed with reference being made to illustrative embodiments, many alternatives, modifications and variations thereof will be apparent to those skilled in the art.